Fort Stanwix, Treaty of

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Fort Stanwix, Treaty of

FORT STANWIX, TREATY OF. 5 November 1768. At a council attended by over two thousand Indians and presided over by Sir William Johnson, the Iroquois gave up their claims to lands southeast of a line running from Fort Stanwix (later Rome, New York) to Fort Pitt (later Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), and thence along the southern bank of the Ohio River to the mouth of the Tennessee (Cherokee) River. The treaty replaced the temporary proclamation line of 1763 with a "permanent" boundary between white settlements and Indian hunting grounds, and opened vast tracts along the frontiers of New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia to white land speculators and settlers. Because Iroquois claims to these lands were specious, and no one thought it important to consult the actual inhabitants of the lands in question, the treaty amounted to a huge land grab to feed the rapacious appetite of whites for western lands.

SEE ALSO Johnson, Sir William; Proclamation of 1763.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

McConnell, Michael N. A Country Between: The Upper Ohio Valley and Its Peoples, 1724–1774. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992.

                         revised by Harold E. Selesky

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Fort Stanwix, Treaty of

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